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Thursday Morning Federal Newscast - December 9th

Thursday - 12/9/2010, 9:22am EST

The Morning Federal Newscast is a daily compilation of the stories you hear Federal Drive hosts Tom Temin and Amy Morris discuss throughout the show each day. The Newscast is designed to give FederalNewsRadio.com users more information about the stories you hear on the air.

A House bill to freeze your federal pay for two years and most cabinet department budgets in FY 2011 faces opposition in the Senate. The House passed the measure last night. It would cap federal agency operating budgets at $1.2 trillion. But the Senate is working on its own version that would provide slightly more money and include thousands of earmarks.

House Republicans have formally chosen a new leader for the Oversight and Government Reform Comittee. California Congressman Darrell Issa will take the chairman's seat in the new Congress. The selection is no surprise. Issa, who's currently the committee's ranking member, had been widely expected to win that seat after November's elections. He says we can expect an agressive schedule of hearings. Experts believe those probes will include one of the stimulus program.

If you want to be the most effective at recruiting top talent for your agency or business, technology is the way to go. A new report by the Partnership for Public Service shows that e-recruitment, online job fairs and other online technology go a long way in attracting special groups and hiring for hard to fill positions. The Federal Times reports that the paper called "America Has Talent," spotlights agencies that are making progress in recruiting, and finds that best practices are not enough to guarantee agency recruitment success. Agencies that are managing to bring in new, younger talent include the Social Security Administration and the Energy Department.

We're learning about a new contest that aims to help the VA take care of the veteran population. It is called the Veterans Health Wireless Innovation Challenge. The challenge is to design an award-winning wireless device or application that targets a specific problem facing the VA like PTSD, hearing loss, hypertension, or vision loss.

Northrop Grumman Corp. has agreed to pay more than $5 million to settle allegations that it misled the Air Force about tests on a paint system it developed for the B-2 stealth bomber. The U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles said in a statement Wednesday that Northrop agreed to pay the federal government $5.21 million with no acknowledgment of any wrongdoing. The statement says the company developed the Advanced Topcoat System for the B-2 from 1998 to 2002, and found cohesion problems during testing that it allegedly failed to fully disclose. The paint was applied to two bombers, but during a test of one of them in July 2002, parts of the topcoat peeled off and the original paint had to be reapplied to both.